Square one

I hardly remember why I was there in the first place. It didn’t matter. Perhaps my father had been a diplomat. All that mattered was the terror.  The discombobulation and despair that had been foisted on me. I feel that if you can remember why you got into the position you’re in, the how, then you can accept it all a little more easily. This situation though was untraceable and absurd.

I learnt that when you are dealing with something as significant as death, your own, you struggle to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. I can’t remember when I was first informed — perhaps it will come back to me — but I have blanked it all out. Maybe I blacked out. But I do remember the disbelief. I do remember going back and forth, clumsily, between a state of comfortably thinking this was a joke, not a mistake, but a joke, to the stark recollection of the time and the date. I hadn’t been given much notice. It was set for the following day at 5pm, it was to be a Sunday.

I remember that when they first told me, these moments of disbelief managed to cast a safety blanket over the death, they managed to very effectively divert me away from believing in it. I hazily recall these moments of not being under the pall of death and I am grateful for them. I don’t know though how I managed not to melt or expire on the spot. The fear was so great, it was thick and dense, it was electric, it encircled the perimeter of my body but also extended into the air close by, yet somehow this incredulity neutralised it a little, just enough that I could continue to operate, stand up, breathe, even think, enough that I was able to express myself and talk, convene with the lawyer and my parents, remember to refrain absolutely from any sort of equivocation,  unyielding that this must have been a mistake. I felt it was very important to continually emphasise my innocence to my advisors and the gap in the fear allowed me to do so.

And I did feel that to insist on my innocence was crucial; that stopping to protest for one moment would amount to a confession, even amongst my parents and the lawyer and with the ambassador who I never actually saw in person. I felt I was being tested and if this was actually a joke then I shouldn’t laugh it off. I had to treat the accusation seriously and fend it off with all my power.

I could see life all around me continuing irregardless and this destabilised me. I could see that if you weren’t inculcated in a death warrant you were carefree and just carried on living. You steered clear. I was initially just plain disappointed that no one cared. I wasn’t shocked. I expected it somehow. But I wanted at least a show of interest, some pretence. Not only was there no such show, no one could fathom why I’d been sentenced and didn’t pay the slightest amount of lip-service to finding out. When I referred to it, there was this blanket imperviousness, as if they didn’t know about it, hadn’t known, as if to say that since they hadn’t known, it couldn’t be of interest. This attitude, conveyed in one look, also seemed to express that it was none of their business, not so much out of a fear of it touching them as well — because it seemed to me like they knew they couldn’t be touched — but more because they couldn’t get anything from involving themselves in it, in listening to me. As soon as I spoke, people seemed to look at me for no more than an instant before walking right through me.

When you are in danger of losing your life, when it really dawns on you can’t slip away, you start to think about anything that might allow you to wheedle your way out, however far-fetched. It is counter-intuitive. When there had been doubt, hope, I hadn’t bothered, resisted, I had just taken my continuity of life for granted. Since there appeared to be no movement with the authorities, I thought about two things. First, I tried to cast my mind back to the time when I hadn’t been sentenced, in the vain hope of convincing myself that this was still the case now. But I couldn’t recall it, neither the actual state of affairs nor the feelings. I couldn’t recall a time when I had gone around as a free man in this country. I had to give up the fantasy. Second, I thought about running to the border. I wasn’t and hadn’t been detained. I never understood why; I hadn’t given it much thought. I thought now that I could escape to Iraq or Saudi Arabia, and why would anyone be after me — I was a nobody — why wouldn’t I run away from impending death, it was a no-brainer, yet something kept me from running, perhaps my own father, perhaps I had wanted to say by the side of my parents, just to be a good little boy.

I also thought that if I hadn’t decided to run yet that there must have been a good reason why I hadn’t. My thinking process stopped there. I didn’t try to reconstruct this reason. Recalling the reason would have been sensible. I wrongfully trusted my former self in the instants preceding the present one, stupid with the benefit of hindsight. Yes perhaps my own father wanted me to die, just because he didn’t want to cause a stir and I went along with it. No one remotely suggested I should run, I don’t think I even mentioned it to the advisors. I think I thought they’d dismiss it, but I could have run and I might not have been in the predicament I’m in now if I’d done so. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t have the guts.

My father - and I keep coming back to him - was mute, silent and powerless, I would go as far as to say complicit. When we stood in the large double-fronted front room of the town hall on that Sunday, the day of the execution, when the American military had come up to join us, to act as chaperones, the one person who I expected to fight my own corner, my father, hardly spoke. He stood with his back against the large bay window with his hands clasped behind his back indicating he wanted to be no part of it. With two hours to go it was starting to hit home. I felt that if my father had got involved, if he’d raised his voice, shown some gusto, then the soldiers would have intervened. As it happened they expressed their support of the regime’s decision. They said that whenever a foreigner was implicated it put them in danger since they had to mediate between the two sides and would often be caught in the crossfire. I was putting their lives in danger. They were advocates for my death more than anyone. But if my father had raised a word against them, I feel it might have set the ball in motion.

There is not much more that I remember about the affair. The day before, I had decided to wander around the central market and bumped into a friend from London who had grown up here. I don’t know what he was doing and it hadn’t occurred to me to ask. But he was the only person I told. And as I told him I was maniacal, half sobbing, half suppressing hysterical laughter. I think the laughter was my way of getting through to him; lightening the mood, it was how I thought this sentiment needed to be conveyed such that he could access and make sense of it. It struck me that I could not even manage to convince myself of the seriousness of my situation. I said to him that I was going to put to death tomorrow at 5pm. I said it matter-of-factly or as matter-of-factly as I could manage. And I waited for an answer. But there was no show of shock or angst; I had failed to convince him because I had failed to convince myself. He looked sheepish, he didn’t straight out laugh it off, but he didn’t know how to be or what to say. I tried to reiterate. Although my dread was outwardly mitigated by this bizarre making-light of it all, I was terrified and desperate for his support and intervention.

So as we stood in that large bureaucratic room, in that library with all its heavy leather-bound books in the cabinets behind glass doors, the moment got closer and closer. They were whispering to each other. I had long given up with my excuses, with trying to rouse them; I felt I was flogging a dead horse. I tried what I always do in these life or death situations, I tried to wish myself away; I tensed all my muscles, I blew out my cheeks and clenched my teeth, I tried with all my might to transport myself to another place. I could not believe that this was going to happen. I hadn’t lent a thought to how, but I started wondering what it would be like to actually die.  Here is the end again, I thought. This is horrific. It is going to happen.

——————

I never made it to the execution room. It is always a big surprise, the end. It always catches you off-guard. You expect the ultimate and it never comes. You want some sort of ground-in terror. I was not saved. I died but once again it didn’t happen in the way I thought. I have died many times, either that or I’ve been on the brink, which amounts to the same thing. There is no moment when you can turn around to yourself and say you’re gone. Not at all. Perhaps I have just blanked out the hanging. But even that is a ghost, I didn’t see any hint of a firing squad, no macabre wooden-backed chair, no strap-ridden bed, I am obviously  imagining all of that. It is an illicit thrill. No, I went through it, you have to go through, and like all the previous times, I got the big-joke-reveal as soon as I did. The reveal is that I was untouched, I was not in Iran at all, perhaps I never had been. Just as I have never been this arbitrary Simon Barget character. I will find this out soon enough for certain and we will be back to square one; square one is where we are.